


lost and found each other

by leoperidot



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (not in a gross way u creeps), Atka (OC), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nanuq (OC), Past Character Death, Sesi (OC), Uncle-Nephew Relationship, meteor mutual extended universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoperidot/pseuds/leoperidot
Summary: The first time he saw black snow, Nanuq wasn’t scared.Hewasn’t. Because Sokka wouldn’t have been scared, and Nanuq was a big kid like Sokka. He had his boomerang. He’d been practicing. A warrior had to show no fear.The ship was even bigger than last time. Its hulking metal body blotted out the sun.or: a homecoming, and the slow beginning of healing
Relationships: Bato (Avatar) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25
Collections: Meteor Mutual Club Extended Universe: The Originals





	lost and found each other

**Author's Note:**

> hello nanuq stans and soon to be nanuq stans!! he's an oc created by the meteor mutual server and he's bato's nephew. all you really need to know before going in is that his name, nanuq, means polar bear in inupiaq, and nanuayaaq is a diminutive meaning little polar bear. source here: https://kawerak.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/DIO-glossary-prep-guide.pdf
> 
> i stole the title from abby acezukos here pianjeong on tungle. love u
> 
> have fun!! and merry christmas if u celebrate !!!

The first time he saw black snow, Nanuq wasn’t scared.

He _wasn’t_. Because Sokka wouldn’t have been scared, and Nanuq was a big kid like Sokka. He had his boomerang. He’d been practicing. A warrior had to show no fear.

The ship was even bigger than last time. Its hulking metal body blotted out the sun.

And Nanuq wasn’t scared. He wasn’t. He was just—He was stopping to think.

People said the war was over now. That was why everyone was celebrating, a couple weeks ago.

Why was there still black snow? 

Auntie Sesi stopped before him, crouched down so she was looking up at him. Kallik’s tiny-squishy face peeked over her shoulder, looking at him with her wide, curious toddler eyes. “You wanna come with me, honey?”

Nanuq’s hands tightened around his boomerang. The snow underfoot was darkening, greying. Sokka had told them about the first time _he_ had seen black snow, that he’d ran towards the beach with all the men, that he’d seen the soldiers in red and black with the helmets and the horns on their shoulders, and he’d protected the village like a warrior should.

Auntie Sesi laid her gentle hands on Nanuq’s, stilling his nervous fingers. “It’s okay, baby. We’re safe. They’re not here to hurt us. Promise.” 

“I’m not a baby,” Nanuq pouted.

“Big kid,” she said with a smile. She prized one of his hands off his boomerang and took it in hers. “Come on. You want to see this.”

He let her lead him to the shore, but he didn’t loosen his grip on his boomerang.

Auntie Sesi wasn’t actually related to him—she was his mama’s best friend, and they’d lived with her after Sesi’s husband left for the war. He didn’t have any more relatives other than Uncle Bato, who was away-away, fighting in the war with all the men. They were all away-away. Even Sokka. Which was why Nanuq had to show no fear.

(The war was supposed to be over but they were still all gone.)

The ship was much bigger than last time, but it stopped politely on the shore, not ripping into the ice like the one months and months ago had. (The time that Sokka and Katara had disappeared. The time right before Mama—)

A lot of people started coming off the ships. People in parkas, not the horned-shoulder faceless armor. People with wolftails. People from here.

A big, tall man started coming over to where Nanuq and Auntie Sesi were standing and instinctively, Nanuq buried his face in Auntie Sesi’s parka.

She tsked at him. “It’s your Uncle Bato,” Auntie Sesi said, but he was so tall. Imposing. Nanuq didn’t want to see. She nudged him, crouched down and pushed a little on his head so he’d look up at him. “Don’t you remember?”

The big man’s face was all hard lines and shadows. Nanuq didn’t recognize him. He knew his mama had a brother, knew he’d been away at war, but how was Nanuq supposed to know this was him?

The man who might have been Uncle Bato knelt down before him, and said, “Hey, kiddo.”

His voice was deep and slow and Nanuq remembered it, he remembered stories under the stars about sea monsters and little boys who turned into wolves and he remembered his mama laughing with Uncle Bato—Suddenly, the sharp lines of his face transformed into something familiar, someone Nanuq knew—

Somehow, Uncle Bato was hugging him then. Nanuq didn’t remember that happening. He also didn’t remember starting to cry.

“It’s okay,” Uncle Bato murmured. “I got you. It’s okay.”

Nanuq buried his face in the fur hood of Bato’s parka. It smelled weird, not like home, but it was soft and Uncle Bato was warm and strong and—“I miss Mama.”

Uncle Bato made a sharp sighing noise, and he held Nanuq tighter, and it hurt but not the way a scrape or a bruise hurt, it hurt inside. The way it had hurt when Auntie Sesi had picked him up and held him hard, when she wouldn’t let him see Mama, when she wouldn’t even tell him where Mama was.

Uncle Bato held Nanuq hard like that, and he murmured, “I miss your mom too, nanuayaaq.”

A sudden ugly, painful feeling rose up in Nanuq at the old nickname. He pushed away from Uncle Bato. “Don’t call me that,” he said, trying to muster up an intimidating voice but only managing a pout. He scrubbed at his face with his sleeve.

“What?”

“Nanuayaaq. I’m not a baby,” Nanuq insisted. He’d been a baby when Uncle Bato had left, maybe. He wasn’t a baby any longer. 

“O-Okay,” Uncle Bato said, putting on a confused face. “Sorry?”

“I’m not a baby!” Nanuq stamped his foot. “I’m seven!”

“I’m sorry, kiddo, I shouldn’t have—”

“You were gone _forever_!” Nanuq was shouting now. He wasn’t supposed to shout, Mama wouldn’t—“I’m a big kid now.”

Uncle Bato’s brow was scrunched down. “Of course you are,” he said quickly, “of course—”

Nanuq stomped again—it felt good, ice cracking and snow crunching under him. “You were supposed to come back soon, Mama said—” he zoomed on past the clenching feeling in his heart, the tightness in his throat—“Mama said you were gonna come back soon, why didn’t you come back?”

“Oh,” Uncle Bato said. “Oh, bud—”

“STOP IT!” Nanuq shrieked. It pierced through the other conversations, turned any eye that wasn’t already on the two of them towards them. It cracked more ice underfoot. “I hate you!”

Uncle Bato looked at Nanuq then, just looked at him with such a desperately sad face, and grown-ups weren’t supposed to look that sad, were they?

Nanuq didn’t know what to do. He ran.

~*~

Bato couldn’t move, for a moment, because he was frozen by regret.

His nephew’s form was growing smaller and smaller by the second, tearing through the village with impressive speed, and everyone’s eyes were on him.

That could have gone better.

Then he couldn’t move because the knees of his trousers had frozen to the ground.

Bato scrubbed a weary hand over his weary face.

“He’s been doing that,” came Sesi’s voice. She’d pulled away from Igalaaq’s arms; he stood a little ways away with his mother, who had their little girl—Bato remembered when the news of her birth reached their fleet, they’d celebrated for days—in her arms. “The tantrums.”

Bato shook his head. “I fucked up.”

Sesi shrugged mildly. “It’s all right,” she assured him. “If you knew the amount of times he’s told me he hates me . . .” She shrugged. “Kids do that. Act out when they’re hurting. He doesn’t mean it.”

Bato had lost his own mother when he was twenty-eight. He thought that statement could be amended. Hell, he was thirty-nine now and still sometimes wished he could throw a tantrum.

Sesi offered an arm to his left and he hoped she didn’t think anything of it when he took it with his right. He was left-handed, but that. He leaned on her strength to pry his knees out of the ice, letting out a groan as his joints protested.

“Old man,” Sesi teased, but there was no bite to it. Bato knew both of their hearts twinged in the exact same way.

There was silence between them.

Sesi’s face was more lined than it had been when Bato left; permanent furrows had etched themselves into her forehead, parentheses enclosing her mouth. Bato wondered whether Atka had begun to age. Had her face sharpened, as their mother’s had, or rounded, like their father’s? Had she begun to get the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes that he was starting to see in his? 

The first time Bato had felt old, for real, had been in Hakoda’s cabin all those months ago, with Sesi’s letter clutched in one hand, the other hand dangling loose from his still-bandaged arm. He had noticed himself aging before, felt his back aching more quickly than it once had, plucked out the odd grey hair. But when the news came from home—his sister dead, of the same mystery that had killed their mother—it was as if two decades had fallen squarely on his shoulders all at once. 

Sesi reached over then, to clap him on his bad shoulder. He did his best, but he couldn’t hide his grimace, nor could he ignore the way her eyes widened when he flinched away from her.

“Bato.” 

She didn’t know. She still didn’t know.

He shook his head. In all his daydreams of coming home, he’d somehow failed to imagine this particular awkwardness. 

Sesi pursed her lips and raised one eyebrow in doubt, such a near-perfect mirror to how Atka would have reacted that Bato’s heart could’ve given out. “Tell me,” she implored.

He sighed. Rolled his shoulder to distract himself, to feel the muscles working instead of the ruined skin. Wished the fur lining of his parka weren’t quite so—textured. “I was burned.” He gestured his right hand up and down his wrecked left side. “Ages ago now, but—” He broke off with a shrug.

Sesi let out a soft “ _Oh_.”

“It’s all right,” he said quickly. 

Sesi, carefully avoiding his left arm, wrapped him up in a hug.

It all fell on his shoulders then. The weight of the loss.

It was enormous.

It had been when Bato had returned from the abbey—Hakoda had embraced him, welcomed him back aboard with a strong grip, but never quite met his eye. It was only after they had celebrated, their stomachs full of meat and limbs loose from dancing, that Hakoda had taken Bato into the captain’s office with a stoic set to his lips and said, “I have two letters for you from home. First one came in not long after . . .”

The sentence was not finished and did not need to be.

The first letter Hakoda handed him bore the telltale signs of having been intercepted by the Earth Kingdom. 

“Fong broke into that one,” Hakoda said, frustration chipping away at the diplomacy that had never come naturally to him. “Couldn’t bear the thought that we could be planning something with the women back home.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course, he didn’t find anything, he never fuckin’ finds anything, but—” 

Bato put up his hand to stop Hakoda’s rambling. His knees were sagging; he perched on Hakoda’s bed and tried to breathe to the bottom of his lungs. He recognized Sesi’s handwriting. She was his sister’s oldest friend, as joined at the hip with her since childhood as he and Hakoda were.

He did not want to read it.

_Bato,  
Atka is very ill. Not contagious. Healer Ekilat says it’s similar to what your mother had. She’s doing everything she can, but it isn’t the kind of thing she can cure. She’s just trying to make her comfortable, that’s all she can do. We don’t know how long it will be.  
Nanuq doesn’t understand what’s happening or why. I don’t know what to tell him. None of us do, least of all Atka.  
We miss you. Nanuq misses you. Atka misses you. Please come home soon. Well, win the war for us, then come home, of course. We love you.  
Sesi_

Bato held the letter tight in clenched fists. _It’s similar to what your mother had. It isn’t the kind of thing she can cure. Nanuq doesn’t understand._

_Atka misses you._

“Where,” Bato asked, his voice breaking, “is the second one?”

Hakoda handed it to him. “Came in probably six weeks ago,” he said. It was sealed tight. No other eyes had seen it. 

Bato felt nothing in particular as he slid his finger under the seal; he felt like his head was full of cotton, like the world was fuzzy, not quite there. The wax gave way with a quick pop, not even tearing the paper. He spread the letter flat one-handedly, feeling every crease and imperfection in the parchment keenly on his fingertips. 

He knew what it would say even before he schooled his eyes into reading.

_Bato,  
Atka died this morning. I was with her. She was sleeping. Very peaceful. The best we could hope for. Nauka, Luda, and I will bathe her and wrap her very soon. Funeral to be held tonight at sunset.  
I’m so sorry.  
Nanuq seems to be holding up fairly well, but I’m worried he’s too young to understand she’s gone forever. He’ll stay with me for now.  
Come home as soon as you win.  
Sesi_

Hakoda had nestled himself on Bato’s right side, perched his head on Bato’s shoulder, threaded his arms around Bato’s waist.

“I’m so sorry,” he’d murmured.

Tears threatened. Bato held his face tight against them.

“I—” 

With that little word, he nearly collapsed in on himself. He cut himself off quickly. Didn’t let it happen. 

“What is it?” Hakoda’s voice was nearly a whisper.

Bato shook his head.

Hakoda turned his head so his cheek was resting on Bato’s shoulder, readjusted his arms, and kept holding Bato. Hakoda was settled. Like he expected to be here, holding Bato, for a while.

He wouldn’t need to. Bato breathed slowly until he wasn’t teetering on the edge of crying, then cleared his throat and made to stand up. “I’m gonna head to bed.”

Hakoda didn’t say no, exactly. He let Bato go, but frowned up at him with the kind of concern he usually reserved for his children. “You don’t want to talk about it?”

“I’ve had a long journey,” Bato replied. Which was true. His head was pounding. “Maybe . . . Maybe in the morning.” That was bordering on a lie.

So they didn’t talk about it.

And it was easy, on the ship, to ignore it. There were chores to do, battles to fight, strategies to plan, a war to win. He pulled himself out of bed in the morning and went through the motions of being a sailor and a warrior, and if he was withdrawn, or pensive, or irritable, or snappish—that was just Bato. That was just how he was.

Hakoda eventually stopped trying to bridge the topic every moment they got alone. 

Bato hadn’t realized just how heavily it had weighed him down.

Bato pulled himself out of Sesi’s embrace now, scrubbed the sleeve of his parka across his face like a child, like Nanuq, and he sniffled slightly, laughed softly at himself. He was too old, and his grief too old, for it to hurt like this, for him to cry like that.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “That was . . .”

The grief was months old, but it had never felt nearly as huge as it had as soon as he smelled the South Pole air.

“You’re all right,” Sesi said. Her eyes, too, were bright with tears.

“I thought I was . . .” He shook his head. “Doing better.” He thought he’d been managing it. Thought the numbness could continue. Thought—“I thought—” This was ludicrous. “When I came off the ship, I half-expected to see her here.”

Sesi clicked her tongue in sympathy.

He was ridiculous. This was a child’s understanding of death, an utterly infantile concept of a person being _gone_ , but he had—“I kept scanning the crowd for her, I . . .”

“Sometimes I convince myself she’ll still be there,” Sesi offered, mercifully allowing Bato to swallow the rest of his sentence. “When I wake up in the morning, I think when I roll over I’ll see her beside me. But it’s just cold air.”

The admission took a moment to process in Bato’s mind, but when it did, his heart sped up. “You and Atka—”

“We were very close,” Sesi said shortly. “And without husbands—I mean, the women had to do all the men’s jobs, didn’t we?”

It was half a joke, and Bato gave a hoarse chuckle, because if he didn’t laugh he’d cry. But it—it hurt. In a way he couldn’t quite explain, he ached. He’d always thought, and his sister must’ve thought too, that they were alike, if just in that one way—but they never spoke of it, because no one ever did, and because it never mattered, and now she was gone. She had been like him, and she was gone. 

Sesi would return to her husband and wake up next to his warmth. Bato didn’t want to envy her for this, but some ugly piece of him did.

Bato and Hakoda—they had tried, tentatively, every so often, in stolen moments on their ship or in their camps. But they had never discussed, nor did Bato really care to know, how much of it had been love and how much wartime desperation. 

Sesi cleared her throat and said, “Nanuq really loved her five-flavor soup.”

Bato was jolted back to the conversation at hand with a disconcerting force.

Sesi smiled at him bittersweetly. “He’ll beg me for it and then, when I make it, he’ll refuse to eat it.”

“Kids,” Bato said, in an attempt to commiserate.

Sesi poked his arm. “Go find him. That’s your first task. Go find him and bring him back.”

~*~

Nanuq was staring at the ice in the cave. Ice was comforting—smooth and orderly. It made sense. When nothing else did.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all, because everybody else his age had a mother who would call after them if they went too far, who would pick them up and hold them and carry them home. And their mothers would tell them scary stories, about snow monsters who would woosh in with the wind and gobble up children out on the tundra alone. And then their mothers would hold them, and keep holding, and not let go because mothers didn’t let go of their kids. It didn’t work like that.

It wasn’t fair because fathers were returning home now.

It wasn’t fair because everybody else could run around and play warriors like there was nothing wrong. Like the world wouldn’t collapse in on itself if they laughed.

Sometimes Nanuq did. Sometimes when the hurt in his heart got to be too much and he couldn’t keep feeling it, he would play with his friends like nothing was wrong. He would do tricks with his yo-yo or race to the bottom of a hill or something and he would laugh, sometimes, too.

But that was bad. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Because his mama was dead and he was supposed to be sad and if he was playing or laughing then he wasn’t sad which meant he couldn’t have loved her not really which meant he was bad bad bad—

“Nanuq?”

It was Uncle Bato’s voice. Uncle Bato was in his cave. Uncle Bato had found him, and he’d probably be mad, because Nanuq had yelled at him and told him he _hated_ him and that wasn’t nice. That wasn’t nice at all.

“Oh, there you are,” Uncle Bato said, sounding relieved. Nanuq looked away. Uncle Bato made a tsking noise that sounded a lot like Mama, and Nanuq heard him sit down. “How are you feeling?”

Nanuq hid his face in his knees and shook his head resolutely. He didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to think about it. 

Uncle Bato sighed heavily, and Nanuq suddenly felt his insides shrivel up with shame. But then he said, “I’m sorry.”

Nanuq frowned at that. 

“I know I’m not the best at this,” Uncle Bato continued. “You need your mom, and I’m never going to be her. I know that. I, um.” He scrubbed a hand over his wolftail. “I messed up. I’m new at this, too. I’m sorry.” 

Nanuq wasn’t going to cry. He _wasn’t_. His mouth was trembling and his eyes were watering but he wasn’t going to give into it because he wasn’t a baby, he was a big kid and big kids didn’t cry.

“Oh, kid,” Uncle Bato said. “C’mere.”

Nanuq launched himself into Uncle Bato’s open arms, hiding his face in Uncle Bato’s parka, breathing in the weird, humid, kind-of-home-but-not-really smell. He wasn’t crying-crying but he was almost there—he _wasn’t_ going to cry. Uncle Bato gave a little sigh and held him tight. Then Nanuq was really crying. And Uncle Bato just held him, like it would be okay.

“I bet you miss your mom,” Uncle Bato said. “Huh?”

Nanuq nodded desperately, gripping Uncle Bato’s parka hard and sobbing into the hide.

“Me too,” Uncle Bato said. “I miss her a lot.” He was rubbing slow circles on Nanuq’s back, between his shoulder blades. “You wanna know something I miss about her?”

Nanuq nodded again.

“I miss how when I was sad, or angry, or lonely, she always knew how to make me feel better. She was really, really good at that.”

Nanuq sniffled. He remembered that. His mama was the best at that, at kissing where he got hurt or hugging him when he was sad or making him feel calm when he was mad. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Uncle Bato said, patting Nanuq on the back. “Yeah.”

Nanuq kept crying into Uncle Bato’s parka until all his tears were cried out and he was just sniffling, hiccuping a little. Nanuq pushed away from Uncle just a little ways, sat up, rubbed away his tears with the sleeve of his own parka, and looked up to see Uncle Bato smiling with a little sadness in his eyes. Then, because he was cold (and definitely not because he felt like crying again, he was a big boy and not a baby), Nanuq squirmed back into his arms, into a more comfortable position. He pulled a little on Uncle Bato’s left arm, and Uncle Bato let out a quiet “Oof.” Nanuq turned around with his best worried face. “Does your arm hurt?” he demanded.

Uncle Bato frowned a little bit, but then he nodded. “I got hurt,” he says simply. 

A spike of fear pressed its way into Nanuq’s chest. “Is it gonna get better?”

“Yeah,” Uncle Bato said. “I’ll be okay.”

Nanuq sagged against Uncle Bato’s side in relief. Mama and Auntie Sesi and Healer Ekilat had never sounded so sure. Uncle Bato sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He had to be right.

“That’s good,” Nanuq said, wrapping his arms around Uncle Bato’s midsection, “because you’re not allowed to leave anymore.”

A deep, low chuckle rumbled in Uncle Bato’s chest—Nanuq could feel it vibrate. “I’m not allowed to?”

Nanuq shook his head. “No. It’s against the rules.”

Uncle Bato hummed his agreement. “I like that rule, kiddo.”

Nanuq wriggled in closer and lifted Uncle Bato’s left arm so it was draped across his shoulders. Maybe it hurt for him to move it, so Nanuq was just doing him a favor. Uncle Bato rubbed his shoulder slowly, gently, and Nanuq smiled—he’d done the right thing. 

“I have another rule,” Nanuq said. “You’re allowed to call me nanuayaaq. You and Mama are the only people allowed to call me that.”

Mama had called him that, a long time ago. It hurt to hear it from Uncle Bato, but what if no one ever called him that again? He thought maybe he missed it more than it hurt.

“You sure?” Uncle Bato asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Uncle Bato smiled, and squeezed Nanuq tight, and said, “I love you, nanuayaaq.”

Nanuq nestled in close to Uncle Bato, and didn’t let go.

They stayed like that for a while, until Uncle Bato asked, “You wanna go back home, kid?” 

Nanuq nodded. 

“All right. Me too. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting pretty cold in this cave.”

Nanuq nodded again. The cave was good when he needed to be alone, but it got lonely quick, and chilly, and a little scary too. Not that Nanuq was scared. Especially not of polar bears—they shared his name, so they shouldn’t be scary, they were just. They were really big. And he thought maybe he was kind of in their house, and he didn’t think they’d be very fond of that. As for the monsters his mama used to tell him stories about, he knew they weren’t real. They’d scared him when he was a baby, but he was grown up now and didn’t believe in silly things like monsters that would eat children who ran off into the tundra on their own.

“Okay, kiddo,” Uncle Bato said, and stood up with a groan that made Nanuq giggle.

“You sound like an old man,” he informed his uncle.

“Do I, now?” Uncle Bato chuckled and reached for Nanuq’s hand. “Sometimes I feel like an old man.”

“You _are_ an old man,” Nanuq said, as they found their way back into daylight. Uncle Bato had grey hairs, mixed in among the black, and grey hair meant you were old, didn’t it?

Uncle Bato’s face was wide-open shocked. “You wound me, nanuayaaq,” he said. “I’m wounded.”

Nanuq giggled.

And it hurt a little. In his heart. Like he shouldn’t have been laughing, because Mama was gone and it felt wrong to be happy if Mama was never coming back. But Uncle Bato missed Mama too, and he was laughing too, even if he was sad, so maybe—maybe it would be okay if Nanuq was happy, a little bit, too.

“I’m only telling the truth,” Nanuq said.

“Sure you are,” said Uncle Bato. And he held out his hand, for Nanuq to hold. It was big and warm and strong, and Nanuq was okay.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @katarahairloopies :^) 
> 
> kudos and comments make my day, if u are so inclined!! ty for reading :)


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